Shunning of Islamists by Western news organisations drives recruitment for Isis, says leading media figure

The refusal of Western news organisations to involve Islamist voices in the debate on the future of the Middle East is acting as a recruitment driver for Isis and al-Qaeda, one of the region’s leading media figures has claimed. The accusation that global news groups are “pushing people to become extremists” was made last week to The IoS by Wadah Khanfar, the former managing director of the Al Jazeera network.

Mr Khanfar is Arianna Huffington’s partner in the new Huffpost Arabi website, which has been embroiled in controversy since it launched eight weeks ago. Critics have denounced the site for giving a platform to extremists and allowing them to voice comments criticising gays, atheists, and the practice of taking selfies.

But Mr Khanfar said it was never the intention of Huffpost Arabi to replicate the editorial policy of the New York-based Huffington Post, which has established itself as a leading international liberal news brand since being founded by Cambridge-educated Ms Huffington a decade ago.

He said the new site had a duty to reflect the society it was addressing. “Huffpost Arabi is not a translation of Huffington Post English – the editorial priorities are not the same,” he said. “Some issues that might be regarded as a priority in America or London might not be the same priority in the Arab world. We have hundreds of people dying every day in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and that is creating a much bigger priority.”

He accused Western news media of failing to understand the complexities of Islamism. “Political Islam is a phenomenon that is about 100 years old – it started after the First World War. The phenomenon evolved and transformed in many ways,” he said. “It became part of the politics of the region and is not outside the politics of the region. You need to deal with all the components of the region and isolating one segment means imbalance in the solution you are introducing.

“A society in order to be healthy and move from polarity should include [all] its components and allow them to find space, otherwise we are pushing people to become extremists and this is how Isis was born.”

Mr Khanfar, who was born in Palestine, educated in Jordan, and has Qatari citizenship, has himself been accused of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Several former Al Jazeera colleagues – including Washington based bureau chief Hafez al-Mirazi – accused him of hiring “hard-line Islamists” into the organisation.

The editorial policy of the Qatar-funded Al Jazeera under Mr Khanfar’s leadership infuriated the Egyptian regime and led to the network being banned. Subsequently, three Al-Jazeera journalists were given jail sentences after being arrested for broadcasting false reports and colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood, charges all three denied.

Asked if he felt responsible for the journalists’ plight, Mr Khanfar, 46, attacked the Egyptians for pursuing a political vendetta. “I think the government of Egypt wanted to punish Al Jazeera and punish Qatar. All the accusations were fabricated.”

Dressed in a grey suit, pink shirt and red tie, he praised Amal Clooney, the British lawyer who defended one of the accused, Mohamed Fahmy, and said the verdict was inevitable because “the case was politicised”. The journalists have since been freed.

Mr Khanfar played a significant role in building Al Jazeera into one of the world’s leading news organisations and worked as a journalist for the network in South Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan.

He acknowledged that Huffpost Arabi’s parent, which was bought by the American internet giant AOL in 2011, is itself a Western-owned global news organisation, but argued that, through its network of blogs, the new site would reflect the debate on the streets of the Arab world.

“If you are going to create a proper serious platform that subscribes to the mainstream agenda rather than a marginal one, you may encounter certain emotions or descriptions which might be a little outside editorial policies,” he warned. “We are not afraid of that.” He said the site’s news articles would follow strict rules on accuracy, enforced by an editorial team based in Istanbul.

Speaking to The IoS in the London offices of his firm, Integral Media Strategies, Mr Khanfar accused Western media of “creating misunderstanding” which jeopardised a revival of the pro-democracy Arab Spring movement of 2011.

Huffpost Arabi, he said, stood for “the spirit that emerged in Tahrir Square”, where the uprising began. “This is the most brilliant and golden moment in our history and it has been fading away because of the counter-revolutions, and civil wars that followed.

“We should not lose hope of reviving that moment amongst our young people, because if these people lose hope in peaceful transformation towards justice and democracy then the alternative will be extreme – it will be Isis.” The region’s current conflicts were, he said, a painful part of a process that would ultimately lead to the establishment of democracy in the Middle East.

“Eventually the narrative of democracy and freedom will succeed and the price has to be paid. How long this will take us, I don’t know.”